While there was occasional non-democrat leadership the Democrats have dominated Seattle politics since at least 1969 with the election of Wesley C. Uhlman as Mayor.
This is what you get:
This area of town was bad in the late 1970’s. I remember it was said that almost all the motels in the area rented rooms by the hour. If you drove up the street you could sense the decay without necessarily being able to articulate the reasons why.
A former manager of mine was a Seattle cop for many years. He lived not too far from this area. He told me a couple of decades ago a movie theater was built there. Over the years after that he visited the parking lot of the theater as a cop to deal with a body more frequently than to see a movie.
This is a political problem. These politicians are either not connected to reality and/or deliberately want to destroy our country.
Prepare and response appropriately.
My response is to build an underground bunker in Idaho.
I can’t see any reason to worry about criminals shooting each other. When innocent bystanders are at risk, that’s a different matter.
I will be blunt, with apologies for also being crude.
If you are a man who supports this, you are by definition a whoremonger. If you are a woman that supports this, the defining word is whore. Sorry, not sorry. When whores and whoremongers are in charge, this is what you get. There is zero concern for children or girls or innocent bystanders. And it destroys society, to an extent unfathomable to most normal thinking folk.
Yall need a giant meteor to fix this!
Tom762
Donate to the Giant Meteor 2028 campaign!
A while back the term was SMOD. Sweet Meteor Of Death.
Yeah, there is a reason I refer to Seattle as “Sodom on the Sound.”
Ironically, this is lefty Seattle lining up with conservatives who think individual liberty is paramount: they think people should be able to make their own choices, so sex work is a choice and patronizing sex workers is a choice and it’s all FREEEDUUUUMMM!
Of course the reality is it’s a bunch of human trafficking and child abuse and rape, and everyone involved should be arrested, and in the case of the girls, given shelter and protection and a way out (since most report that the main threat to them is their pimps/traffickers).
And then when we find the traffickers, we should re-institute public executions. Not that I support capital punishment, but I could be talked into making an exception.
But lefty Seattle, they really think this is all just a choice and messing with people’s choices is bad (funny, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that line from a lot of libertarians). Same with the homeless and drug addicted and mentally ill: you can’t restrict their freedom to live as they please.
The folks on Aurora are fed up and fighting back (politically), but I don’t know that we can bet on the rest of Seattle doing so.
“Ironically, this is lefty Seattle lining up with conservatives who think individual liberty is paramount: they think people should be able to make their own choices, so sex work is a choice and patronizing sex workers is a choice and it’s all FREEEDUUUUMMM!”
Right. Because so many areas where conservatives hold power have legalized prostitution.
Oh wait……….. This is just another utterly-unrelated-to-reality comment from John. Really, which side of the aisle pushes for legalizing “sex work”? Who even makes those kinds of euphemisms to try to slip it by people? Not the conservatives.
Of course, if they just *actually legalized* prostitution, it would still be better than THIS. The only state where it is legal is much better than this.
No, this is the usual from the Left – just don’t actually enforce the law, but leave it on the books in case you need it to abuse some political opponent.
On a slightly more educational note, you need to understand, John, that libertarians have significant overlap with both conservatives and lefties, with additional stuff that overlaps with neither of them. I leave fairly libertarian myself, in terms of lack of trust of government and the actions I would restrict government from being involved in for that reason, but I still don’t remotely agree with them on several very large points.
“Of course the reality is it’s a bunch of human trafficking and child abuse and rape, and everyone involved should be arrested, and in the case of the girls, given shelter and protection and a way out (since most report that the main threat to them is their pimps/traffickers).”
Yep. And in actually conservative areas of the country, *that’s what happens*, which why they don’t have areas like this, or at least MUCH MUCH less of it… and only in the big cities, generally ruled as small Lefty fiefdoms.
On one hand, I’m thrilled to see the residents of that area pissed off enough to march and take action.
On the other hand — and not to downplay the stand they’re making — I was expecting more. When I see that a neighborhood “declares WAR against pimps shooting up” their streets, what I don’t expect to see is … calling on police and city leadership to step in, re-establish criminality of prostitution, and enforce those city ordinances (that they weren’t enforcing before de-criminalization).
I realize that a community of people rising up and fighting back — literally shooting back at the pimps and gang enforcers with their own firearms, particularly rifles — is probably too much to ask, but when the headline reads “declares WAR against pimps shooting up Aurora Avenue,” that’s what comes to mind.
For some of these neighborhoods, I fear that’s what it would take. But the sad reality is that the one thing that would get the police and city leadership to become heavily involved in that neighborhood, is if the residents took matters into their own hands. The very first pimp or gangster shot by “community patrol” would bring an overwhelming police presence, not to stop the open-air prostitution and gang gun battles, but to crack down — good and hard — on “vigilante justice.”
I wish them luck and good fortune.
“The very first pimp or gangster shot by “community patrol” would bring an overwhelming police presence, not to stop the open-air prostitution and gang gun battles, but to crack down — good and hard — on “vigilante justice.””
Sadly, you are not wrong.
But as I pointed out in an entirely different discussion on another website recently, the one thing the state ******MUST****** have is a monopoly on organized use of force. It is the single most important thing, inherently and unavoidably.
Of course, de facto arms of the ruling group are included in that – “brownshirts”, the KKK, etc. That’s why you get VERY VERY VERY different standards of treatment for groups doing the same thing (or one of them doing MUCH MUCH worse and still getting better treatment). The 2020 BLM riots, the most destructive riots in the history of this country with a body count in the 30s or so (that was the only nice thing about them – they were less deadly for their size than past large riots) was treated with kiddy gloves, while the January 6th riot (which killed no one and burned nothing) was treated as the highest existential threat that ever existed.
Even self-defense and how it is treated get implicated here. There are entire books about why actual, career criminals are treated so well while a law abiding citizen that has the gall to legally defend themselves is treated so badly. That applies in this particular case very much.
Now, none of this is to JUSTIFY the bejaviour you describe, which I *completely* agree with you is how that would go. There is certainly a LOT of bad faith actions from the government in setting this situation up.
But if the state does not have a monopoly on force, it is no longer THE state – it is one among competitors. That is actually quite bad… see Mexico for how that goes.
There are things that are worse, and certainly Seattle and other such places that set up things like this on purpose (and while the details aren’t directly controlled, it is very much on purpose) are circling that bowl, but that’s the level that it takes to even BEGIN considering such things.
And of course, they count on the good citizens have the restraint and forethought to avoid the horror that they are very much courting. It’s like playing chicken with all of society at stake. It’s disgusting.